Stations v3: persistent stations with explicit user editing
The original design idea of stations dates back to five years, since the first pre-EA prototypes. Although stations have evolved in important ways, their basic building mechanics have remained the same. There's some aspects to these mechanics which are undesirable and were making game design evolution impossible, so 1.15 introduces a new concept of stations based on explicit user control, rather than the implicit effects of overlapping tracks.
In short: in 1.15 stations are a collection of track segments explicitly selected by the player. In 1.14 the concept of "if the platform footprint touches, it is in the same station" was a core game rule, implemented and enforced in the most lower levels of the game logic. In 1.15 this rule is now an specific feature of the station creation tool in the track editor. Platform tracks can now freely overlap each other without being part of the same station. It is also not necessary for them to touch to be considered part of the same station. In essence the platform-station relationship is now under full control of the player.
Stations can now exist independent of platforms. In fact, stations with 0 platforms are allowed to exist. And deleting tracks will never delete stations. Deleting a station will now require a explicit player action, respecting the player work.
Tracks can be manually assigned to stations to convert them into a platform. This is streamlined with a dropdown to directly pick nearby stations, so there’s no need to go hunting for icons or nodes on the the map. In a similar fashion, you can also remove the association to a station (the old demote) or create a new station from a track (the old promote). There are bulk editing versions of these tools, so you don't need to manually assign tracks one by one.
Platform extension buildings have been removed. There’s no need anymore for any track to touch any other track, you can just directly edit which tracks belong to a station, and this link will persist until is deleted.
Walk link buildings have been removed. The new station editor allows to create walk links by selecting nearby stations in a list.
In 1.15 the only time you’ll see platform footprints is when you use the station platform tool. These footprints now have zero gameplay relevance, and only exist as a guide to select a station for appending a platform to it. Click inside a footprint and it extends the station with a new platform, click outside and it creates a new station. The end result is that using this tool is very similar to the previous design, but the only time the footprints are relevant is during that first step in this specific tool, and nowhere else.
Station editor
As mentioned earlier, in 1.15 stations have become persisting objects. This will enable new design and gameplay features, but for now the most visible one is a new top level editor in the left toolbar. The station editing options formerly located in the track editor are now located in the station editor. This means the track editor is focused on buildable physical elements, like tracks and declaring these tracks as platforms of some station. And the station editor focuses on more abstract concepts, like population radius, tags and walk links. A few of the most basic station editing options, like naming, will also remain accessible in the track editor.
Big rewrite of the track editor internals
In order to support the new multiplayer system in 1.15, most of the track editor internals needed to be scrapped and rewritten. In particular all the code relating to track modification and creation relied on the fact player changes were immediately applied to the game database. This is not the case anymore in 1.15. Now player changes are only applied to the database when they are confirmed by the player by finalizing the editing action, like by releasing the mouse when moving some tracks, or clicking a second time when creating tracks. All the intermediate states before these actions are now implemented by the track editor, using a new predictive editing system which keeps the main game database untouched. This improves reliability and performance, both in single and multi player. Despite these deep changes track editor tools look and behave almost the same.
Signal and track editor improvements
It is now possible to create signals and branches in platforms. But keep in mind basic line stops ignore if a platform has branches or signals. The game won't pick up a stop area based on the fact of a signal or branch existing at some point in the platform. Please use advanced stops or stop point signals for better control of the train stop position when you create signals or branches in platforms.
The new signal mode now automatically picks a signal facing and side based on an heuristic of the mouse position with respect to the track position. This can be reversed for left hand drive with a new button in the left toolbar. Holding shift to reverse the direction remains possible.
The "forced straight" snapping invoked by the Control key while creating tracks has been replaced with a snapping mode based on proximity to the projection of the tangent of the previous track. It also draws a line for better clarity. This is enabled by default in all saves, but it can be reverted to the old setting with a new button in the left toolbar.
Point mode track creation is now possible. Compared to the point mode creation tool tested in the v1.9 beta series, this new version has much improved UX and it closely mimics the behavior of other popular games with vector based track/road laying. If you prefer to create and erase tracks without editing, as is the norm in other games, you might prefer point mode creation.
Full rewrite of multiplayer internals
As explained in the November devblog, the way multiplayer works in the game engine has been completely rewritten to be more correct. Game consistency errors like invalid stations and glitched tracks should not happen, or if they do, do not happen at any rate different compared to single player. This has been achieved by making the game server the single source of truth and removing the eager execution of player editing actions by clients. Now clients only apply editing changes when told by the server, including for the local player. And this gives the main tradeoff of the new system: multiplayer now exposes latency to the player, and tries to mitigate it at the UI/rendering level (this is how virtually every other videogame works). If you multiplayer with moderate to high latency you will notice small pauses when doing certain actions, and the game editors telling you they are busy sometimes. As mentioned earlier the track editor has been partially rewritten to mitigate latency in multiplayer.
For a more detailed overview of the 1.15 changes, check out the October and November devblogs:
https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-october-2024/
https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-november-2024/